Flyers have their own opinions about Clippers' owner Sterling

Philadelphia Flyers' Ray Emery in action during the third period in Game 3 of an NHL hockey first-round playoff series against the New York Rangers, Tuesday, April 22, 2014, in Philadelphia. The Rangers won 4-1. (AP Photo/Chris Szagola)

PHILADELPHIA - Aside from a mutual respect and professional kinship between the athletes, the NBA and NHL rarely cross paths, especially at this time of year.

Then all Donald Sterling broke out.

So on the morning of a potential elimination game for their Flyers team, the two team members who happen to be black, Wayne Simmonds and Ray Emery, were asked to chime in on sports’ hottest and most distasteful story of the week.

To their credit, they didn’t let the importance of the story escape them no matter how urgent of a work day it was for them.

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“I definitely think the league has to protect itself from people like that,” Emery said of Sterling, “and kind of make an example of a guy like that.”

Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has had a career pockmarked with questions of his racial views stemming from his business practices with residential properties he’s owned.

But this incident cropped up when his young girlfriend, who is of Mexican and African-American lineage, released a tape of comments Sterling allegedly made that essentially expressed the viewpoint that he didn’t want her bringing black friends (like Magic Johnson) to games or other public events.

Some three hours before NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was to conduct a press conference on the matter Tuesday, Simmonds voiced his feelings as a black athlete on the story that seems so out of place in 2014.

Or does it?

“Not really,” Simmonds said. “You’d like to say yeah, but I’ve had enough things happen to me and seen enough things in this world, that nothing shocks me now.

“It’s unfortunate, obviously,” added Simmonds, a rising NHL star who often has been dragged into incidents or discussions of racism in sports.

But maybe that’s because he’s always so eloquent on the subject.

“You want the owner of your team to stand behind you and have faith in you; not to have that kind of outlook on life,” he said. “(But) you can’t really change someone’s opinion.”

Asked his opinion on whether as an athlete he would have a problem playing for an owner such as Sterling, Simmonds immediately answered,

“Definitely, 100 percent.”

“Make him sell the team, get him out of there,” Simmonds added. “Obviously, basketball is predominantly a black sport. You have an owner voicing his opinion that way, when the coach is black, (and) probably a lot of people in management. I’ve heard he’s had people in management quit because of his opinions. Stuff like that. It’s really unfortunate. We live in a world like today where there should be no color. You (should) judge a person by their inside and not by the way they look, their appearance. It just sucks the way it is right now.”

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NOTES: Ahead of tonight’s Game 6, Flyers coach Craig Berube has inserted Erik Gustafsson in the spot where Hal Gill played Sunday in New York. Regular defender Nick Grossmann is still out with a lower body injury. It’s unclear who Gustafsson would be paired with. ... Other than that, expect the Flyers to stick with their lines, even Scott Hartnell up top with Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek. Said Hartnell: “I have to be better.”